A sealable bottle is known from the European patents EP 1 451 081 B1 and EP 1 456 092 B1. A bottle disclosed in these patents comprises a stopper which is made of glass and can be inserted into the bottle opening. The bottle further comprises a fixing element that is attached to the bottle body in a detachable manner and retains the stopper inserted in the bottle opening in place.
Such a bottle presents several drawbacks. First of all, the fixing element attached to the bottle body comes at additional costs. Secondly, once the detachable fixing element is removed, e.g. when the bottle is opened for the first time, it can in general not be reattached. Therefore, proper sealing cannot be achieved any longer once the bottle has been opened.
As a consequence, it cannot be stored any more, e.g., in horizontal position. Thirdly, if the fixing element inadvertently comes off, for instance during transport, the stopper is not mechanically retained anymore and may easily come off as a result of increased internal bottle pressure.
Moreover, the closure systems disclosed in EP 1 451 081 B1 and EP 1 456 092 B1 present another drawback, when used in the wine industry for closing a wine bottle. Indeed, since the closure systems cannot cope with the manufacturing tolerances of ordinary wine bottles, these closure systems require a specific wine bottle, the mouth of which is specifically adapted to the shape and dimensions of the stopper. Therefore, wine producers wishing to adopt such a closure system for sealing their wine bottles instead of corks made of natural or synthetic cork will be forced to change their bottling processes and adapt them to these specific bottles, which are more expensive than standard bottles and are also only available from a few glass bottle manufacturers.
A bottle stopper arrangement which does not need a fixing element attached to the bottle is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,245,569. The bottle stopper arrangement described therein is specifically designed for a bottle in which a fluid is maintained under pressure, in particular a Champagne wine bottle. The bottle stopper arrangement comprises a tubular insert adapted to be secured in the mouth of the bottle, and a bottle stopper adapted to be inserted into the tubular insert. The tubular insert has an inner face defining a passage, the cross-sectional area of which decreases in the direction from its outer end in the mouth of the bottle and its inner end within the bottle. When the stopper is inserted into tubular insert, the insert is spread in the lower part, due to the decreased width of the passage in the lower part of the insert. By doing so, the spread lower part of the insert comes into an interlocking connection with the inner wall of the bottle neck because going downwards, the bottle neck widens up in the area of the spread lower part of the insert. The inner face of the tubular insert has at its outer end a screw-threaded annular surface portion and the bottle stopper has at its outer end a screw-threaded annular surface portion for engaging the screw-threaded annular surface portion of the inner face of the tubular insert. Due to the above-mentioned interlocking connection (which is supported by an additional interlocking connection outside at the rim of the mouth of the bottle), no fixing element is needed to hold the stopper securely on the bottle.
However, also the bottle stopper arrangement disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,245,569 has several drawbacks. For example, it can only be used in combination with a specific bottle, the Champagne wine bottle, the inner wall of the bottle neck of which has an increasing diameter in the direction starting from the bottle mouth. The bottle stopper arrangement cannot be easily adapted to any bottle, for instance a bottle having a cylindrical bottle neck. Further, the tubular insert needs to be rather long, corresponding about to the length of a conventional wine bottle cork. Further, when the stopper is removed from the bottle, the insert stays on the bottle, which makes use of the bottle unpleasant. Further, at least two steps have to be carried out during for sealing the bottle in the bottling plant: in a first step, the insert needs to be put on the bottle, and only in a second step, the stopper can be placed on the bottle. The need for two steps makes bottling expensive. Further, the user needs to rotate the stopper over several turns before completely unscrewing the stopper, which makes the opening process cumbersome.
A stopper for necked bottles is disclosed in GB 1 276 485. The stopper arrangement described therein comprises a stem adapted to be inserted into the bottle neck, having a rotatable first member which moves a second member inside a stem. The stem has a cap with flexible tongues which increases in thickness of the when the second member moves on the stem. A sleeve and a sealing ring are provided for fluid tight. As it can be seen in FIG. 2 of GB 1 276 485, of the document, the increased displacement of the cap, and thereby the displacement of the sleeve is provided in the lower part.
However, the stopper disclosed in GB 1 276 485 has various drawbacks such as for the process of sealing, it is required that the stopper is placed in the bottle and rotated since it would not be possible to insert an already assembled and sealed stopper due to its large sleeve and increased displacement at the lower part.
Due to the need for rotating the stopper after it is placed inside the bottle, the method of bottling would therefore require two steps: in a first step, the stopper along with all the components has to be put on the bottle, and in a second step, the stopper needs to rotated multiple times to reach a sealed state. This need for two steps makes bottling expensive.
A stopper in GB 26 631 teaches a stopper having a core and covered with a sheath. However one drawback of this stopper is that the sheath is provided in the entire surface of the core, thereby requiring the core to be placed on the sheath inside the bottle and then rotated. This requirement of rotation during bottling makes the bottling method expensive.
Another drawback of the system in the above prior art documents having a sealing element between the stopper and the bottle such as in GB 1 276 485 and GB 26 631 is that a gap formed between the stopper and the bottle due to the placement of the sealing element. This gap creates accumulation of dirt and dust and therefore causes unhygienic circumstances.
Furthermore, none of the closure systems without a capper or the like on the top of the stopper such as U.S. Pat. No. 3,245,569, GB 1 276 485 or GB 26 631 have any indication provided to the user if the stopper has been used earlier and if the bottle has been opened after bottling, since it does not have a tamper proof mechanism.